Potter Palmer

A judge gave final approval Wednesday to a settlement between lot and crypt owners at Rosehill Cemetery and the North Side cemetery's owner, Potter Palmer. The settlement, approved by Cook County Circuit Judge Albert Green, would allow Palmer to build a funeral home on three acres on the northwest corner of the 350-acre cemetery. But Palmer, who has owned Rosehill since 1983, would not be allowed to develop the site in any other commercial way. The cemetery, at Peterson and Western Avenues,...

When the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the original Palmer House just 13 days after dry-goods merchant Potter Palmer built the hotel in 1871 as a gift to his bride, the State Street developer quickly plunged into rebuilding. It reopened in 1873. The inn has remained open ever since through various remakes, a longevity record in the U.S., and now it's emerging from its latest, and biggest, face-lift. Coming to market ahead of the credit crisis, the project escaped the financing...

She knew Leo Tolstoy and President McKinley, business tycoons and ranch hands, queens and shop girls. She was a child bride turned entrepreneur, a socialite who fought for labor causes while dressed in Parisian gowns and jewels noted by the press in Paris and Palm Beach. Bertha Honore Palmer (1849-1918) is the subject of a new musical being presented Thursday through Saturday at Manatee Community College in Bradenton. "The Fabulous Mrs. Palmer" was written and produced by playwright Jo Morello and...

When Congress proclaimed in 1987 that March would be National Women's History Month, some men may have scratched their heads and wondered why women were making such a fuss. Maybe men were happy with history books that told about wars won and lost and leaders strong and weak. But women's contributions were significant, if largely unacknowledged. Here are some ways to learn more about women's contributions to history. In 1889 Jane Addams moved into an elegant home in...

The Gold Coast was still brand new as the fanciest of Chicago's neighborhoods in 1888 when this 13-room Queen Anne-style home at 1207 N. Astor St. was built. And while it wasn't as lavish as Potter Palmer's "castle" a few blocks east, it was no shack either. Indeed, it was one of many elegant homes constructed in the land rush of the high and mighty that followed Palmer's move to the area in 1885. In recent years, the home has been extensively renovated, and its former coachhouse now serves as a...

Although Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had a famously extravagant banquet there in 1879, it has been a long time since there was a compelling reason to dine in the Palmer House. There was a time when Sunday brunch at the Loop hotel's Empire Room was the thing to do, but brunch is strictly an Easter and Mother's Day event these days. Trader Vic's once assuaged the umbrella-drink and pu-pu platter cravings of tourists and businessmen, but that restaurant exited the Palmer House in 2006. Well, grab your...

Where is the fun in striking it rich any more? These days, by splitting the rent on a high-rise apartment, even shop girls and stock boys can enjoy a view of Lake Michigan. But before democracy ruined the neighborhood, shore-front footage was a high civic honor reserved for Chicagoans of entrepreneurial genius--or those with the genetic foresight to have a Daddy Warbucks father. So when next you chance to ride along Lake Shore Drive between Oak Street and North Avenue, roll down the...

Like the world of classical antiquity, Chicago has its fallen wonders, hallowed monuments no longer with us save in nostalgic reverie. Sure, our city didn't have the likes of the Colossus that greeted ancient travelers to the island of Rhodes. But the Loop was marked by a giant, animated figure of a parking lot attendant. Looking "L" riders in the eye, it moved its arm up and down in a welcoming salute. So here are the Seven Lost Wonders of Chicago, according to an admittedly personal reading of...

By John Handley. John Handley is a Tribune staff writer | July 19, 2000

No front-door knob? What kind of second-rate mansion is this, anyway? Just about the most famous home built in Chicago in the 19th Century, that's what. Millionaire merchant Potter Palmer ordered the construction of a palace overlooking Lake Michigan (near what is now Oak Street Beach) in 1882. In so doing he launched the Gold Coast as the preferred residential enclave for the rich and famous. Since the Palmers were society leaders, others in Chicago's elite followed them to the Near North Side.

Q is for Quincy Street, once one of the most prominent streets in the Loop but now a three-block, abbreviated secret, just south of Adams Street between Clark and Franklin Streets. It is also a place where one can take a trip into the past, courtesy of the Ravenswood Line 'L' stop at Quincy and Wells Streets. It won't take you back as far as 1871, when Potter Palmer built the first Palmer House Hotel at the corner of State Street and Quincy, when Quincy was a longer street. His timing was lousy.

Q is for Quincy Street, once one of the most prominent streets in the Loop but now a three-block, abbreviated secret, just south of Adams Street between Clark and Franklin Streets. It is also a place where one can take a trip into the past, courtesy of the Ravenswood Line 'L' stop at Quincy and Wells Streets. It won't take you back as far as 1871, when Potter Palmer built the first Palmer House Hotel at the corner of State Street and Quincy, when Quincy was a longer street. His timing was lousy.

The Gold Coast was still brand new as the fanciest of Chicago's neighborhoods in 1888 when this 13-room Queen Anne-style home at 1207 N. Astor St. was built. And while it wasn't as lavish as Potter Palmer's "castle" a few blocks east, it was no shack either. Indeed, it was one of many elegant homes constructed in the land rush of the high and mighty that followed Palmer's move to the area in 1885. In recent years, the home has been extensively renovated, and its former coachhouse now serves as a...

Jim Guth, 33, a well-known Chicago caterer, history buff and antiques collector, died Saturday of complications from AIDS in his Logan Square home. Mr. Guth began operating Chicago Caterers Ltd. 11 years ago out of his apartment in Lincoln Park and built it into a socially connected business that today employees 15 full-time workers and hundreds of part-timers. With offices at 1419 Diversey Parkway, Chicago Caterers has contracts with the Green Room restaurant at the Civic Opera House and...

By John Handley. John Handley is a Tribune staff writer | July 19, 2000

No front-door knob? What kind of second-rate mansion is this, anyway? Just about the most famous home built in Chicago in the 19th Century, that's what. Millionaire merchant Potter Palmer ordered the construction of a palace overlooking Lake Michigan (near what is now Oak Street Beach) in 1882. In so doing he launched the Gold Coast as the preferred residential enclave for the rich and famous. Since the Palmers were society leaders, others in Chicago's elite followed them to the Near North Side.

- 1834: Stiles Burton's grocery and liquor store becomes the first retail establishment on State Street. - 1852: Potter Palmer, today recognized as a retailing pioneer, opens P. Palmer, Dry Goods and Carpets on Lake Street. - 1856: Marshall Field, age 22, arrives in Chicago from Pittsfield, Mass., and takes a job at Cooley, Wadsworth & Co., the city's largest dry goods wholesaler, with an annual salary is $400. He and his best friend, Levi Z. Leiter, eventually become partners in Cooley Wadsworth.

There are stores we love and stores we hate and then there is Marshall Field's on State, the shop that in the space of an escalator ride once turned whining, apprentice delinquents into ecstatic, sweet-eyed angels. In a simpler era before the blight of toy superstores and mega-malls, Chicagoans grew up seeing Field's as equal parts torture chamber and heaven. Nirvana was the fourth floor -- a vast and unbroken expanse of every train, doll, stuffed animal...

By Teresa Wiltz, Tribune staff. Reprinted from "Chicago Days: 150 Defining moments in the Life of a Great City," edited by Stevenson Swanson, Contemporary Books | February 9, 1997

The whole Midwest was parched, caught in the thrall of a mighty drought. Chicago, with its preponderance of wooden buildings, inadequate fire codes and inferior firefighting equipment, was a conflagration waiting to happen. On this Sunday evening, it did. Blazes had flared up throughout the region that year. One leveled four square blocks along Canal Street the day before, and on the day of Chicago's disaster, the deadliest fire in American history killed 1,200 people and destroyed Peshtigo, Wis. But...

By Teresa Wiltz, Tribune staff. Reprinted from "Chicago Days: 150 Defining moments in the Life of a Great City," edited by Stevenson Swanson, Contemporary Books | February 9, 1997

The whole Midwest was parched, caught in the thrall of a mighty drought. Chicago, with its preponderance of wooden buildings, inadequate fire codes and inferior firefighting equipment, was a conflagration waiting to happen. On this Sunday evening, it did. Blazes had flared up throughout the region that year. One leveled four square blocks along Canal Street the day before, and on the day of Chicago's disaster, the deadliest fire in American history killed 1,200 people and destroyed Peshtigo, Wis. But...

When the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the original Palmer House just 13 days after dry-goods merchant Potter Palmer built the hotel in 1871 as a gift to his bride, the State Street developer quickly plunged into rebuilding. It reopened in 1873. The inn has remained open ever since through various remakes, a longevity record in the U.S., and now it's emerging from its latest, and biggest, face-lift. Coming to market ahead of the credit crisis, the project escaped the financing...